Legends of the Left: Oliver North a "convicted felon"

Apparently quite a few people still believe that Oliver "Ollie" North is a convicted felon.  Those who believe it most stridently seem to hail from the left of the political spectrum, hence the categorization of this fact check post as a Legend of the Left.

How does the political left refer to Ollie North?

The irony of a convicted felon who lied about diverting proceeds from arms sales to a rebel group in Nicaragua supporting a policy that forces gay and lesbian servicemen to lie about their sexual orientation was lost on both Hannity and North.
(ThinkProgress)

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Convicted felon manager in Iran Contra crimes ...
(dKosopedia)

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By the way, Oliver North is a convicted felon.
(jsgaetano, from comments at the Huffington Post)

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Oliver North, a convicted felon pardoned by Bush Sr. offers his fact checking abilities on Obama's address to congress.
( idiotechnica.com)

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The host usually speaks from a position of moral strength, being himself a recovering alcoholic (Glenn Beck), a drug addict (Rush Limbaugh), or a convicted felon (Gordon Liddy, Oliver North).
(Bernard Chazelle, Princeton University)

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This brings us to an incident on air several weeks ago that received no publicity. The guest of honor was the heroic, ex-marine-convicted-felon, Oliver (Twisted) North.
(dissidentvoice.org)

You get the idea.

Oliver North was, in fact, convicted on three felony charges out of 16 charges brought against him.  So that makes him a convicted felon, right?

Yes, but only temporarily.  North's conviction was later vacated on appeal.

The Supreme Court declined to review the case, and Judge Gesell dismissed all charges against North on September 16, 1991, after hearings on the immunity issue, on the motion of the independent counsel. Essentially, North's convictions were overturned because he had been granted limited immunity for his Congressional testimony, and this testimony was deemed to have influenced witnesses at his trial.
(NationMaster.com)

Writing after the conviction but before Gesell dismissed the charges, one could call North a "convicted felon" without seriously misleading the reader.  But one could even today reasonably call North a "felon" minus the "convicted" part since factual guilt was more-or-less established even if moral guilt might remain in doubt.

Politico cranks up myth machine for Michele Bachmann

One my monster pet peeves concerns the penchant of the news media to invent a fact and then reinforce it regularly until it turns into conventional wisdom.

One pernicious myth concerning Michele Bachmann had its genesis on "Hardball with Chris Matthews." Bachmann questioned Barack Obama's past associations and questioned whether he might hold anti-american views like those of Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers.

Matthews turned the interview into an argument, attempting at every turn to reduce the issue of Obama's views to an absurdity. I recommend watching the video or reading the entire transcript to get the full flavor, but the important part occurs at the end:

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, he's a United States senator from Illinois. He's one of the people you suspect as being anti-American. How many people in the Congress of the United States do you think are anti- American? You've already suspected Barack Obama. Is he alone, or are there others? How many do you suspect of your colleagues as being anti-American?

REP. BACHMANN: What I would say -- what I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think people would love to see an expose like that.

Matthews spent much of the interview equivocating, and at this stage of the interview has transformed Bachmann's statement that she thinks Obama may hold anti-American views into the notion that Obama is anti-American on the whole or at least on balance. Rather than answering a question containing a false premise, Bachmann returned to her point that Americans should be informed of the views of their representatives. And she called on the media to make that contribution to democracy.

Maybe it's just me, but I had the impression that Matthews throughout held the attitude that questioning whether others hold anti-American views is anti-American or something. And this is how Bachmann's appearance was played up:

New McCarthyism: Bachmann calls for investigation of ‘anti-American’ Congress

Bachmann Calls For McCarthyite Investigation Into Anti-American Activities Of Liberals

Michelle Bachmann gives voice to the right's darkest impulses

Realistically, it just does not make any sense to see something bad in wanting the media to inform the public about the views of elected representatives. Yet after more than a year, the lies about Bachmann come close enough to conventional wisdom to sneak past the desk of at least one editor at Politico.com:

They would like to capitalize on the fervor of the tea party foot soldiers, who have been quick to adopt Bachmann as an icon of their movement. But they’re wary of the movement’s fringe elements and, at times, of Bachmann, who made a name for herself last year when she called for an investigation into “anti-America” members of Congress and more recently when she referred to the Democrats’ health care plan as the “crown jewel of socialism.”

The words chosen by authors Jonathan Allen and Meredith Shiner feed directly into the notion that Bachmann did something significantly similar to what Joe McCarthy did.

That is simply false. But media outlets pull stunts like this every single day of the week.


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The video:


11/7/09: Edited to patch a few holes in my prose

Legends of the Left: Obama foresaw the subprime mortgage crisis

Presidential candidate Barack Obama appears to have achieved a prophetic status rivaling that of Nostradamus, at least when it comes to having vague statements interpreted as specific predictions.

I first encountered this "Obama knew" claim from an acquaintance. He argued that Obama saw the subprime mortgage crisis coming. I could not induce him to offer any specifics, however.

Senator Biden made the claim during his debate with Sarah Palin.

Barack Obama pointed out two years ago that there was a subprime mortgage crisis and wrote to the secretary of Treasury. And he said, "You'd better get on the stick here. You'd better look at it."

Naturally I developed a curiosity about that letter.

And I quickly ran across a link at The Daily Kos under the headline "Obama saw it coming." The blogger "free speech zone" dressed up a portion of an Obama speech with hotlinks:

If you want to understand the difference between how Senator McCain and I would govern as President, you can start by taking a look at how we've responded to this crisis. Because Senator McCain's approach was the same as the Bush Administration's: support ideological policies that made the crisis more likely; do nothing as the crisis hits; and then scramble as the whole thing collapses. My approach has been to try to prevent this turmoil. In February of 2006, I introduced legislation to stop mortgage transactions that promoted fraud, risk or abuse. A year later, before the crisis hit, I warned Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke about the risks of mounting foreclosures and urged them to bring together all the stakeholders to find solutions to the subprime mortgage meltdown. Senator McCain did nothing.

I infer that "free speech zone" added the hotlinks because they do not occur in the version of the speech to which the post links.

Note that Andrew Sullivan also considers this letter a warning about the subprime mortgage crisis.

So what mounting risks did Obama talk about? It's always wise to get the point rapidly in a letter ...

Dear Chairman Bernanke and Secretary Paulson,

There is grave concern in low-income communities about a potential coming wave of foreclosures. Because regulators are partly responsible for creating the environment that is leading to rising rates of home foreclosure in the subprime mortgage market, I urge you immediately to convene a homeownership preservation summit with leading mortgage lenders, investors, loan servicing organizations, consumer advocates, federal regulators and housing-related agencies to assess options for private sector responses to the challenge.

We cannot sit on the sidelines while increasing numbers of American families face the risk of losing their homes. And while neither the government nor the private sector acting alone is capable of quickly balancing the important interests in widespread access to credit and responsible lending, both must act and act quickly.

There simply isn't anything at all in the first two paragraphs that a reasonable person could take as predicting the subprime mortgage crisis. Obama focuses on the risks of foreclosure, not on the risk of a system-wide dissipation of liquidity.

On the other hand, Obama does express some concern over liquidity at number six among six bullet points where he recommends a direction for a summit between private entities and regulators:

• How to ensure adequate liquidity across all mortgage markets without exacerbating consumer and housing market vulnerability.

Sounds a bit vague, doesn't it? But here's the kicker: Obama wasn't foreseeing anything. He wrote his letter after the crisis had already hit. His letter is dated March 24, 2007. The Telegraph (UK) provides a timeline of the crisis showing how Obama predicted a crisis that had already occurred.

30 June 2004 The US Federal Reserve starts a cycle of interest rate rises that will lift borrowing costs from 1%, their lowest level since the 1950s, to the current level of 5.25%.

The central bank will go on to increase interest rates 17 times in a row as it tries to slow inflation. It pauses in June 2006, and has not lifted borrowing costs from 5.25% since then.

August 2005 through 2006 Higher borrowing costs start to impact on the US housing market and the property boom starts to unwind.

Building rates drop sharply to decade lows and prices also start to come down.

Defaults on sub-prime mortgages - where lenders give cash to people with poor or no credit history at higher than normal repayment levels - start to increase.

12 March 2007 Shares in New Century Financial, one of the biggest sub-prime lenders in the US, are suspended amid fears it may be heading for bankruptcy.

It's generally easier to predict things that have already happened, obviously.

What we have here, it seems, is an Obama trying to burnish his reputation for good judgment despite having no real foundation in fact. Biden goes along for the ride, parroting the campaign talking point for the sake of higher office. Andrew Sullivan ... I'm not sure what he gets out of the deal.

Legends of the Left: The "Brooks Brothers" riot (Updated)

A visit to the Center for Public Integrity (publicintegrity.org) reminded me of one of the enduring legends of the left. Gore lost the presidential election, in part, because of a seamy GOP operation designed to intimidate election officials into canceling their manual recount effort in Miami-Dade county.

The Center for Public Integrity hosts a version of the recount written by freelance journalist Susan Q. Stranahan. Here is Stranahan's account of it:

On November 22, four days before the deadline the Florida Supreme Court had set for certifying the vote counts, election officials gathered on the 18th floor of the Miami-Dade government building to resume the hand count. A total of 10,750 ballots awaited, and the outcome could cement George Bush’s slim lead in the state — or give the lead to Al Gore. The clock was ticking.

A large crowd of spectators gathered outside the glass-walled conference room, and as the day wore on, the mood grew increasingly tense. When the officials decided to relocate to a smaller office one floor up, the crowd set up such a ruckus that the canvassers abruptly halted the vote count. It was a major blow to the Gore campaign.

Although the crowd was initially described as locals, “There were no guayaberas. This crowd looked tweedy,” one observer told Salon.com. Within days, they had been identified as Republican operatives and their protest was dubbed the “Brooks Brothers Riot.” Among the leaders were aides to Republican Representative Tom DeLay of Texas. (Four years later, The Washington Post’s Al Kamen and others provided a handy guide to the protesters, titled, “Where are they now?” One was serving as White House political director; another became deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, and several had joined powerful Washington lobbying groups. Another year later, one of the group replaced Karl Rove as Bush’s policy director.)

Stranahan places the focus on the makeup of the crowd that protested the recount. Her treatment is fairer than some others that assert or imply deliberate intimidation of the election workers. But her account ends up just as misleading as the more plainly biased accounts in that it leaves out the most important part of the story. The election officials were proceeding to count the votes in a manner inconsistent with state law, which mandates that any manual recount be open to the public. I documented that requirement at one of my associated blogs. Here is the relevant portion of the law:

(5) If the manual recount indicates an error in the vote tabulation which could affect the outcome of the election, the county canvassing board shall:

(a) Correct the error and recount the remaining precincts with the vote tabulation system;

(b) Request the Department of State to verify the tabulation software; or

(c) Manually recount all ballots.

(6) Any manual recount shall be open to the public.

(7) Procedures for a manual recount are as follows:

(a) The county canvassing board shall appoint as many counting teams of at least two electors as is necessary to manually recount the ballots. A counting team must have, when possible, members of at least two political parties. A candidate involved in the race shall not be a member of the counting team.

(b) If a counting team is unable to determine a voter's intent in casting a ballot, the ballot shall be presented to the county canvassing board for it to determine the voter's intent.

(Florida Statutes for year 2000, Title IX, 102.166)

Note provision (6): "Any manual recount shall be open to the public."

I'm looking forward to the day when any of my friends to the left of the political spectrum demonstrate themselves aware of this aspect of the 2000 Florida recount. The legendary version of it seems destined to dominate history. The scandal, evidently, is not that election officials were poised to carry out a recount contrary to the provisions of the law, but that Republican operatives stopped them from doing it (Note: see update below)

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Of course I am not the sort to leave the Center for Public Integrity unquestioned for hosting the misleading Stranahan version of the 2000 Florida recount. I submitted the following comment just after posting this entry.

The article you host about the presidential election in 2000, focusing on the Florida recount, contains a glaring omission of fact. The author, Susan Q. Stranahan, fails (to note) in her section on the so-called "Brooks Brothers" riot that the county election commission was conducting its recount illegally. Stranahan simply reports that the officials proposed moving the recount: "When the officials decided to relocate to a smaller office one floor up, the crowd set up such a ruckus that the canvassers abruptly halted the vote count. It was a major blow to the Gore campaign." She neglects to mention that the Florida statutes in effect at that time stipulated the any manual recount would be open to the public.
How's that for "public integrity"? An election commission conducting its recount contrary to the law? If you're serious about public integrity then you cannot continue to post this story without attaching some sort of correction.

That isn't the only error in the account, mind you. But it's one that you can't ignore without making a mockery of your organization's name.

I'll update this entry if I receive any reply.


Update: While reviewing one of Stranahan's listed sources I was reminded of an additional critical element of the story that exposes an additional flaw in her version as well as a problem with my would-be correction. The Vanity Fair account of the occurrence states that the reconvened manual recount would have been open to the public. While I am not fully convinced that is true I will suppose that it is sufficiently true to nullify the law-based objection I made above.

However, there is an additional law-based objection from which there is no escape. The Miami-Dade elections officials had decided to proceed with a manual recount of only the contested ballots, and that because of the limited time frame they were offered by Florida's secretary of state, Katherine Harris.

That limited recount conflicts with provision (5)(c) listed above.

Legends of the Left: Bush doesn't care about finding Bin Laden (Updated)

There's very popular assertion made about President Bush that he does not care about apprehending Osama bin Laden.

(Bogus quotation)"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."(/Bogus quotation)

The quotation draws pages of hits, until you restrict it such as by limiting the hits to .edu sites, which reduces it to one page consisting mostly of discussion board material.

Where an attempt is made to source the quotation, it is most often said to have been given during a Bush speech on March 13, 2002:

"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."
- G.W. Bush, 3/13/02
(buzzflash.com)

14. "I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." -Washington, D.C., March 13, 2002
(Daniel Kurtzman, Rense.com)

“I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority.” —Washington, D.C., March 13, 2002
(Eugenia's Rants and Thoughts)

Many more there are. But none of the hits appeared to offer reliable sourcing. Eventually I searched out President Bush's address from March 13, 2002.

Q Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that? Also, can you tell the American people if you have any more information, if you know if he is dead or alive? Final part -- deep in your heart, don't you truly believe that until you find out if he is dead or alive, you won't really eliminate the threat of --

THE PRESIDENT: Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all. Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not; we haven't heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is -- really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.

Terror is bigger than one person. And he's just -- he's a person who's now been marginalized. His network, his host government has been destroyed. He's the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. He is -- as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death and he, himself, tries to hide -- if, in fact, he's hiding at all.

So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. I'm more worried about making sure that our soldiers are well-supplied; that the strategy is clear; that the coalition is strong; that when we find enemy bunched up like we did in Shahikot Mountains, that the military has all the support it needs to go in and do the job, which they did.

And there will be other battles in Afghanistan. There's going to be other struggles like Shahikot, and I'm just as confident about the outcome of those future battles as I was about Shahikot, where our soldiers are performing brilliantly. We're tough, we're strong, they're well-equipped. We have a good strategy. We are showing the world we know how to fight a guerrilla war with conventional means.

Q But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.

But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became -- we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore. And if we -- excuse me for a minute -- and if we find a training camp, we'll take care of it. Either we will or our friends will. That's one of the things -- part of the new phase that's becoming apparent to the American people is that we're working closely with other governments to deny sanctuary, or training, or a place to hide, or a place to raise money.

And we've got more work to do. See, that's the thing the American people have got to understand, that we've only been at this six months. This is going to be a long struggle. I keep saying that; I don't know whether you all believe me or not. But time will show you that it's going to take a long time to achieve this objective. And I can assure you, I am not going to blink. And I'm not going to get tired. Because I know what is at stake. And history has called us to action, and I am going to seize this moment for the good of the world, for peace in the world and for freedom.

(whitehouse.gov)(bold emphasis added)

The phrases I highlighted represent the very closest matches for what Bush is supposed to have said that day according to those critics.

I don't think the quotation is accurate.

Additionally, the context of March 13, 2002 makes clear that Bush remained concerned about bin Laden in terms of bringing him to justice (" But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became -- we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore."), but less concerned about bin Laden's ability to assist in conducting terrorism operations.

If anyone knows a reliable source for the quotation, please let me know and I'll update the post accordingly after verifying it.

Update:
I have yet to pin down the origin of the quotation, but at least I found a liberal blogger who realized that it wasn't kosher (so props to the hard-to-identify blogger responsible ... could be "hclsmith" if we go by the URL):

13: GWB, in Brady briefing room: [OBL] is—you know, as I mention in my speeches—I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death. (as is W) And he, himself, tries to hide, if, in fact, he's hiding at all. (just like W hides from protestors, newspapers, etc) So I don't know where he is. I just don't spend that much time on him, to be honest with you…I truly am not that concerned about him. (The widely-repeated version I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority seems to be a mirage. =( )

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